


You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone

by bekommissar_is_canon



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, One Shot, Original Character Death(s), becommissar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 23:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5184206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bekommissar_is_canon/pseuds/bekommissar_is_canon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knew she'd miss her dearly, but she didn't realize just how much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone

**Author's Note:**

> **Death trigger warning.** A change of pace from the sappy, romantic Becommissar fluff I enjoy way too much. Includes an [ OTP prompt](http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/129154354574/imagine-your-otp-playing-the-floor-is-lava), but is not based on it.

She doesn’t want to stand up. She doesn’t want to leave her airless, stuffy bedroom. She doesn’t want to put on a brave face. She doesn’t want to see the Bellas, or Beca’s father, or a bunch of relatives she doesn’t care for.

She just wants to sit still. In silence. Alone. Preferably forever.

“Mutti?” An all too familiar voice is banging at the door. She winces; Laura has never been one for tactfulness. No wonder she resembles her the most.

A tall, slender young woman with a pixie haircut barges inside. She bends down and plants a kiss on her mother’s cheek. “Mutti, _Opa ist da_. Grandpa Mitchell is here.”

She finally opens her eyes. A tired, lined face stares back at her in the mirror. The drooping eyes seem to have sunken in a matter of days. The pallid skin stretched across the now-rigid cheekbones has a greyish tinge to it, which stands in stark contrast to Laura’s rosy cheeks.

She pats her daughter‘s hand. “ _Ich komme gleich_. I’ll be right there.”

Laura squeezes her bony fingers in reply. She watches her gaze fall on the blazing red scarf tied around her neck. “I’d forgotten about this scarf,” says Laura warmly. “Mama gave you that the year we ruined your sheets, didn’t she?”

“For my birthday, yes,” she nods. “The year you won first prize for your science project.”

Laura’s eyes light up with recollection. “That’s right, the volcano with bicarbonate soda! Well, no wonder I won. I got enough practice home.”

 

~

 

_Every day with Beca was a new adventure._

_Especially with the kids. She never knew what she would come home to; a fort in the bedroom, a blown up kitchen, or roller skate derby in the hallway._

_Oh, and the imaginary games. Who needed toys with Beca’s imagination?_

_One of her favorites had to be the time she returned home from dance practice in LA. It was a freezing cold winter night and her feet were rubbed raw from dancing. She was hoping dearly to find a warm, clean home, the scent of a hearty stew wafting from the kitchen._

_In reality, she was greeted with the sight of her wife and their daughter perched on the sofa in fright._

_“The lava is rising by the minute!” gasped Beca, pointing at the red and orange tissues on the carpet._

_“The volcano is alive!” screeched Laura theatrically. She had always known that girl was destined for the spotlight._

_“_ Vulkan? _Volcano?” she repeated in disbelief. How she wished Beca had taken a photo of her expression. No, she wished she had taken a photo of the living room. Never had she seen a room that messy, not even in the adolescence years._

_“The floors are covered in lava!” shouted Laura. “Don’t take another step! Your feet will melt!”_

_She stared at the red sheets draped over the furniture. “Are those our bedsheets?” she asked in horror._

_Beca threw her a dirty look. “There are no beds in a volcano, silly.”_

~

 

“Luisa!”

Her head snaps up at her name. Surely it couldn’t be –

“Pieter!” Her face crumples at the sight of her oldest friend. “Oh, Pieter! _Du hast’s geschafft!_ You made it!"

“ _Sei nicht blöd!_ Don’t be silly!” he scoffs, opening his arms wide. “You know I’d never leave you alone.”

She crouches to give him a bear hug. “You flew all this way just for me,” she hiccups.

“I didn’t fly, the plane did,” he jokes. “I tried to sit in the cockpit, but my wheelchair wouldn’t fit in.”

She lets out a shaky laugh. “Idiot.”

“Forget about me, how are you?” he asks. He lays a strong hand on her face and peers into her eyes in concern. “Have you lost weight? Are you alright?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she lies dismissively, averting her eyes from his knowing gaze.

He strokes her cheek. “It’s okay not to be fine,” he says gently.

Against her will, she feels a tear roll down her cheek. “She loved the word ‘okay’, remember?”

His blue eyes crinkle in amusement. “Of course I do,” he smiles sadly. “Whenever she got stuck in conversation, she’d say ‘okay’ and wait for me to finish her sentence.”

 

~

 

 _“_ I’m _writing my vows,” said Beca stubbornly._

_She rolled her eyes. “She wants to read her vows in English and German, but she won’t let me translate,” she explained as she handed Pieter a mug of steaming hot chocolate._

_Pieter had flown in from Berlin for the wedding. Even for New York standards, their flat was rather small, especially with an energetic five-year-old. Still, he was perfectly content to sleep on the sofa and help with the preparations._

_“I can speak German,” protested Beca. “I’m learning. Plus, Laura doesn’t speak that much English yet, so I practice a lot.”_

_“How is Laura doing at kindergarten?” asked Pieter._

_“She loves it here,” she smiled. How she had worried that Laura would pine for Germany! Thankfully, she had positively thrived in the States. “I have to drag her home from school. She says the art supplies at home aren’t good enough.”_

_Pieter chuckled. “That’s the Laura I remember.” He turned to Beca, who was chewing on her pencil in thought. “And you two … get along well?”_

_Beca looked up from her notes and beamed widely. “Last month, she called me Mama for the first time.”_

_She still remembered that exact moment vividly. It was the day Laura had scraped her knee badly at the playground. Beca cleaned the wound, put on a SpongeBob band-aid and wiped away her tears._

_“_ Besser! _All better!” she said soothingly._

 _Laura laughed with her sweet, childish voice. She used to find Beca’s American accent so funny. “_ Danke _, Mama,” she giggled._

_Oh, how Beca’s eyes had swelled up in tears. Hers, too, but she never would have admitted it._

_“Why don’t we practice now?” offered Pieter. “_ Was möchtest du sagen? _What do you want to say?”_

 _Beca squinted her eyes. “_ Ich möchte sagen, dass … ich Luisa liebe, und mit ihr … okay _._ _I love Luisa and want to spend the rest of my life with her._ Ja. _Okay.”_

_Pieter burst out laughing. “Okay! Not bad. That’s technically still German.”_

_“I know!” said Beca proudly. “I love English words I can use in German. Okay, how do I say that?”_

~

Grandpa Mitchell is playing with Victoria, his face temporarily lit up in delight.

“Hello, Richard,” she says and places a hand on his shoulder.

He looks up from his great-granddaughter. His wizened face twists in pain at the sight of his daughter-in-law. “Luisa.”

They stare at each other wordlessly, the silence occasionally broken by the babbling baby. What was there to say? They had never got along with each other for thirty years, despite Beca’s best efforts. Now she wishes she had tried harder to like him, this inflexible, stubborn old man. How she hates herself for making Beca uncomfortable whenever he came to visit.

“You remember Pieter,” she says finally.

Pieter clasps Richard’s limp hand. “My deepest condolences.”

He nods silently and turns his attention to Victoria, who is tugging on the glasses around his neck.

“Where are Andrea and Alex? Deanna?”

She feels someone rather shorter hug her from behind. “We’re here, Mutti,” says Alex softly.

She turns around to face the twins. Andrea’s face is streaked with tears, her puffy eyes are barely open. She wraps her arms around both and breaths deeply, inhaling the sweet scent of her children.

“How can Mama be gone?” whispers Andrea. Tears are streaming down her cheeks, but she doesn’t seem to notice. It is uncanny how much Andrea resembles Beca, she is even the exact same height. She averts her gaze from her own daughter; her likeness to young Beca is too much to bear right now.

Alex, her strapping, handsome son, scoops up Victoria. She claps her chubby little fists in delight. “Look, she remembers you,” he says brightly.

She strokes her dark, tight curls, marveling at how much she has grown in mere months. She is undoubtedly the cutest baby on the planet. She so wishes Beca had been able to meet her first grandchild.

“Deanna.” She gives her daughter-in-law a warm kiss. “Thank you for coming. It means so much that you and Victoria came as well.”

Deanna rubs her arm. “You know how much we loved Beca.”

 

~

 

_She had so wanted to carry. True, she was over forty and ten years Beca’s senior, on the later side for a first pregnancy. Still, she was healthy as a horse and wanted to spare Beca, who had a crippling fear of needles, the pain of IVF treatments. They decided to harvest her eggs for their first time, despite the increased risks her age brought. She didn’t have as many childbearing years left, but Beca’s eggs could always be used for a second baby._

_To be fair, she did end up having her eggs harvested. Not just her eggs, but her uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes, the whole nine yards. Her insides were scraped out and left bare to get rid of the growing jungle of cysts, polyps and possible wildlife. She should have been thankful they turned out benign, but she was too busy mourning the loss of her last eggs and cursing the never-ending hot flashes._

_She couldn’t have gone through the hysterectomy without Beca. She was an angel; supportive, tender, understanding, patient. She took time off work, looked after Laura by herself, and was holding her hand when she woke up from the anesthesia._

_She courageously went through four IVF cycles before she finally became pregnant. Not once did Beca make a sound when she was brutally jabbed by her own wife for months. She boldly faced her fear of needles every single day, the same woman who once cried the whole night before having her blood drawn._

_Her pregnancy was rough; first the morning sickness, then the pre-eclampsia. Two bouncing babies were hard on her five-feet-one frame, worsened by constant sciatic back pain. However, she always had a smile on her face, and not once did she hear her complain or yell in pain._

_So it was ironic, really, that she, the intimidating, unflappable Kommissar, fainted at birth, when the burly anesthesiologist brandished his long epidural needle._

~

 

She shifts in her seat. She doesn’t like churches, she doesn’t believe in God. Neither did Beca, for that matter, but she still asked for a Christian service. She suspects this is more for Richard’s peace of mind than for Beca’s, which only intensifies her dislike for the old man.

The old priest reads from the Bible in a monotonous voice. He drones on and on, preaching about this salvation and that afterlife. She stares at her hands folded in her lap, for when she raises her gaze she sees nothing but the coffin in front of the altar.

Laura, Andrea and Alex take turns to read verses from the Bible and say a few words. They bravely plough through, only Andrea bursts into tears at the end. Her stomach twists in pain at Andrea’s cries. She wishes more than anything that she was the one dead in the coffin.

She is wracked with guilt, she even feels guilty for Richard’s grief. Her parents have been dead for years, she has no close blood relatives, nobody would mourn for her the way Richard and the children do for Beca. She isn’t their biological mother; surely Andrea wouldn’t have cried as much. Victoria wouldn’t have lost the chance to meet her paternal grandmother. A father wouldn’t have lost the most precious person in his life.

No wonder she doesn’t believe in God. A merciful God would have given _her_ the melanoma, the older, meaner, cruder one, and spared the younger, worthier, gentler Beca for the sake of her family.

Her thoughts are broken by Pieter, who is jabbing her side rather painfully. It is her turn to say a few words. She stands up and slowly approaches the altar. She has perfect posture, she holds herself tall. She wants the priest and those like Richard to feel disquieted by her presence, an unapologetic, proud lesbian widow.

She purses her thinned lips. She has a few words rehearsed, a few bland, harmless, meaningless words. She feels like laughing hysterically, now that she thinks about it. Does anyone actually think a few minutes could do justice to a love story more than thirty years old? Does anyone actually expect her to say how she really feels? What Beca really meant to her? In a building where she feels anything but at ease?

“Beca Mitchell,” she begins. Her voice rings loud in the silent church. “My wife. My love. My co-parent.”

My lover, she thinks and stifles a chuckle. Shame even she was too polite to say a few choice words about their love life. Some of Beca’s cordiality must have rubbed off on her.

 

~

 

_The first night they spent together was the sweetest one of her life._

_Laura was staying at her grandparents’ house for the weekend, so she was enjoying a rare night out. She still remembered how much she had agonized over her outfit like a giddy schoolgirl. It was the first time they would meet since the Worlds, she had said to herself, she just wanted to make a good impression._

_Beca had been the one who had first reached out. Four years later, on the eve of the upcoming Worlds in Seoul, she received a friend request from Beca Mitchell on Facebook. She would be in Berlin for the annual Terrabeats Festival, and would the Kommissar like to have a drink for old times’ sake?_

_If she insisted, the Kommissar had replied. They chatted for days on Facebook, she even ended up installing the Messenger app, much to Pieter’s amusement. She found herself scrambling to unlock her phone whenever she saw the message icon pop up. Who knew Tiny Maus had such a delightful sense of humor?_

_After graduation she had moved to New York, where she found a lucrative position as a music arranger. She was considering going back to school to do an MBA. Was she still with DSM? Yes, but this year’s Worlds would be her last performance. She didn’t want to tour around the world anymore, not with an adorable toddler at home. She wanted to become a choreographer full-time, perhaps return to classical ballet._

_Perhaps unsurprisingly, neither asked the other if she was in a relationship. She sent photos of her Laura, of course, but she made sure to add that she had adopted as a single mother. Sometimes their conversations bordered on flirtation, but she wasn’t sure if she was simply reading too much into Maus’ compliments._

_Tiny Maus hadn’t changed a bit; the only difference was a nose ring, which rather suited her. She flung her arms around her joyfully, as if she was greeting a long-lost friend. There wasn’t a trace of awkwardness in the air, not a single lull in conversation. Beca had flourished into a confident, able young woman, no longer intimidated by the mighty Kommissar. They conversed as equals for the first time, enjoying and respecting each other’s company._

_After dinner, they went for drinks, then to a jazz club. They were having such a good time, the owners had to shoo them away at closing time. “Want to come over to my place for a nightcap?” she asked._

_“Oh, but what if I wake up Laura?”_

_“She’s with her grandparents. Come on, we can try out my new espresso machine.”_

_Beca complimented her furniture and fawned over Laura’s photo albums. She puttered around the kitchen, helped her wash the dishes, and ate two slices of cake she’d baked with Laura._

_“A little pastry chef in the making,” beamed Beca, scraping the frosting on her plate. “I’m so happy for you. Your face positively glows whenever you mention Laura.”_

_She smiled at her kind words. “Thank you. Want another slice?”_

_“I do, but I can’t physically take another bite,” she groaned. “Would it be incredibly impolite if I unbuttoned my jeans?”_

_She felt her cheeks grow red. “Make yourself comfortable.”_

_Beca took a deep gulp of wine. “We’ve come a long way since the Worlds,” she said thoughtfully. “But somehow you’re still physically flawless.”_

_She stifled a chuckle. “Does that still mean you don’t like me?”_

_“Nah. You’re actually rather fun to be with when you’re Luisa.”_

_She was so cute, her tiny Maus. Even when she wasting away, too weak to stand up, she was the cutest person alive._

_"Does Luisa make you very sexually confused as well?” she asked nonchalantly. She felt her stomach do back-flips; never had flirting made her feel nauseous._

_She laid her soft hand on hers. “I’m not confused,” she whispered._

_The rest was, as the Americans said, history._

~

 

Dinner is a subdued affair. Laura, the best cook in the family, whips up spaghetti bolognaise with steamed vegetables and chocolate pudding for dessert.

 Richard excuses himself right after dinner. He looks drained and tired, she doesn’t take his early departure personally.

He kisses Victoria one last time. “Bring her over before you fly back home, will you?”

“Of course we will,” says Alex reassuringly. “You take care of yourself.”

He hugs everyone farewell. She escorts him to the front door and squeezes his hand in farewell. “Goodbye, Richard.”

“Goodbye, Luisa.” He raises his gaze – he used to be as tall as her, now he barely reaches her shoulder – and stares into her icy blue eyes.

“I know we didn’t always see eye to eye, but Beca loved you more than anything.” He pauses. “Thank you for giving my daughter decades of happiness.”

She is taken by surprise. Not once had Richard ever thanked her for anything. “I loved your daughter more than anything as well,” she replies, trying to keep her voice steady. “Believe me when I say that I wish I had been the one with cancer. I wish I could have spared your daughter.”

“We all must leave this world sometime, and the Lord saw fit to take my Beca first,” he says quietly. “But believe me when I say that I am thankful for your health. I know my grandchildren will be fine under your care.”

She feels her eyes get wet, much to her annoyance. She is tired of crying. “That means a lot, Richard. Thank you.”

She hopes fervently that she is wrong about God and religion. She hopes Beca is watching her finally make peace with her father. She doesn’t mind going to hell (there’s no way she’s going to heaven) if it means that Beca will live for eternity.

Her family is lounging in the living room, surrounded by dozens of photo albums. The kids are chattering animatedly and laughing at their goofy childhood pictures. Deanna is deep in conversation with Pieter, who is bouncing Victoria on his lap.

“I made hot chocolate!” beams Andrea as she walks inside. “Three marshmallows, just the way you like it.”

Laura snorts. “She burned the milk and over-whipped the cream. _I_ made Nutella hot chocolate with coconut milk and chocolate shavings.”

“Show-off,” grins Andrea and throws a cushion at Laura’s head.

“Beca loved a good pillow fight,” says Pieter, smiling fondly at the wrestling sisters.

She rolls her eyes. This was Beca’s influence, all right. Her goofy, creative, imaginative, talented, tender Beca. She could see her influence everywhere; in Laura’s musical ability, Andrea’s soulful eyes, Alex’s penchant for piercings. Even Victoria reminds her of Beca, with her button nose and pointy chin.

She sips her delicious hot chocolate. Their house is a warm, living home thanks to Beca’s magical touches, like her patchwork rugs and colorful posters. Their mantelpiece is decorated with Beca’s music awards and two a cappella trophies from 2015 and 2019.

Pieter rubs her knee. “ _Geht’s dir gut?_ Are you alright?” he murmurs.

She pushes back her silver hair and surveys the room. She watches Andrea wipe off Laura’s smudged mascara, Alex kiss Vicky's head, Deanna wince as her daughter joyfully tugs on her braids. She has her happy, loving family around her. She can almost feel Beca’s presence in the room. “ _Es geht mir ganz gut_ ,” she smiles to her dearest friend. “I am just fine.”


End file.
